River Stones
by AramounSweet
Summary: Tales of our favorite ATLA pals. Life, loss, stress, and romance. Chapter 1 is up!


River Stones

River Stones

Author's Note: My first ATLA one shot. ENJOY, DABCH.

He'd often looked at her from across the water, in whatever form it may've been, and whatever his thoughts may've been previously focused on. It was no longer deniable to him that she was the most splendid thing that had ever happened in his panic of a life, and his reasons for gazing at her were because of just that. But after a calm afternoon they'd spend practicing waterbending, the guilt would come back and swell in his throat and chest until he had to open his eyes and find something to cling to with his gaze with which he could divert his thoughts from it, anything: Momo prying open a nut, the carvings on Appa's saddle, the contents of a bag of supplies, Sok—NO. Not Sokka, and definitely not Katara then. The pain would and did intensify at that.

Katara, a seemingly simple girl, stirred up quite a wide array of feelings in him. One was happiness, which sent his spirit spiraling through the clouds at times when they'd made fun of Sokka while he struggled to catch lunch for them or when he'd fall asleep and they'd drift into the wrong direction on Appa's back.

One was strength and power which he felt in his back and arms when they would spar in a stream or pond for hours on end.

One was certainty and substance when at times she'd make him feel that there was a plan to fix the chaos to which the world had succumbed at his absence, and the blackness that came with that feeling, or simply put, the guilt.

At first he hadn't noticed. They'd met in strange circumstances in an even stranger place- how had he drifted to the Antarctic regions of the south pole? Katara wasn't the least bit on his mind until after he'd discovered his likings- and later his deep affections- for her.

He wondered at her thoughts and if she ever thought about him the way he'd think about her. He often listened to the words she said and trace her train of thought and figure out how she'd arrived at those words. He adored her things: her water skins, her brush or her clips, a loose strand of her hair, a simple spot of air she'd made lovely for him with her delicate scent.

Once she'd taken off her necklace during training and forgot to return it to it's place on her neck and he actually looked, for the first time, at it while she was away buying supplies.

He had never _really _looked at Katara's necklace and now it was laid out in his palm and then dangled before his eyes. Besides the swirling patterns and velvety band, he found that it also carried her charming smell, but also grieving wounds of the past. He'd often seen it. There was a sadness to Katara and although she had over the years become pretty good at burying it away, it had surfaced from time to time, and also, although less often, in Sokka.

Katara was not only a relief to him, after that. He thought again of the feelings she'd stirred in him: the happiness, strength, the substance, and the certainty. Despite these wonderful feelings, Katara was a double-edged sword. If anyone, she could make the guilt worse than ever. And for a period of time, this had changed the way he perceived her from across the water.

Things were different now. All those marvelous feelings had gone away and left in their wake a heavy pain that sat on Aang's chest like a boulder. It was his fault that Katara even had that stupid necklace! Had her mother been alive, _she_ might be wearing it now, and not his delightful companion. And it was all his fault. He was not there when she needed him, and he was not there when the world needed him. It killed him to gape at her now from across the water and think and ask himself how he could have hurt such a beautiful creature, and how she and Sokka were torn apart from their father all because he was not there to keep the Fire Nation in its place. How many other kids had necklaces or bracelets or pendants or other trinkets that were the only things that could remind them of their parents and the happy life they lead before the Fire Nation had burned their memories to ashes? Katara startled him from his reverie.

"What's wrong Aang? Is something wrong?" Her voice rung from across the ripples and blended with the sound of the soft waves.

"I just—you left this here." The glimmer of the blue stone caught her eye.

"Oh, thanks…Is that all?"

"Yeah. That's all," He forced his face into a smile and his throat closed quickly, forcing out a noise that resembled the sounds Momo made sometimes when he was hungry.

"Are you sure?" She was next to him now and her soft palm rested on his arm. "You can tell me if something's the matter. You know that, Aang. It'll make you feel better if you talk about it."

"I'm not too sure about that." He struggled. She had finished putting her necklace back on and her hand had resumed its place on his arm along with a confused wrinkle that had now creased her brow.

"What's this about, Aang? You know I'll keep worrying if you don't tell me."

"It's just…your necklace.."

"My necklace? What about it?"

"It's that….I can't help thinking that…maybe if we'd met in another time and place, you might not have gotten it…" The soft crease seemed to have spread across her tanned skin, and her lovely mouth had assumed a perplexed frown.

"What do you mean, Aang?" And when he could no longer bear the sound of his name roll from the gentle trill of her voice, he threw his staff across the water to a spot near their stuff and covered his face.

"It's my fault, okay! It's because of me your and Sokka's mother is dead! I could've been there to stop them, but it's too late! I ran away, and by the time you found me she was dead! You guys always have to pay for my mistakes! The whole world does! I just wish someone else would've been the Avatar and not me, somebody who was responsible and wouldn't have run away like me! All those people! All those mothers and fathers, all those kids." He raged on and when it had all toppled and spilled out, he turned to Katara.

Her head was no longer turned towards him, but now her gaze was instead fixed to no particular spot on the river somewhere. Her face was tilted slightly, and her mouth had curved into a genial smile while his frown was confused.

"I let you down, Katara—" As he finished his sentence she turned and positioned herself directly in front of him and leaned in towards his face and chest. She raised her arm removing her necklace and used her free hand to uncurl his white fist, then placed the necklace in his palm. He looked up at her,

"You have to understand, Aang," she said as she smiled, "That I've already forgiven you. You have to believe that. It was fate that got you into that iceberg and fate that lead me to find you there, not something you did. You're doing the best you can, and that's good enough. I know my mom is gone, but that doesn't mean everything else has gone wrong too."

"What?"

"We found you, didn't we? My mother is gone just like Monk Gyatso, but now I have you, and Sokka and I still have each other, and-- so do we. I miss my mom sometimes, but I don't know what I would be now without you. I wouldn't know how to waterbend, Sokka wouldn't be the warrior he is now, and Toph would still be locked up in the Bei Fong estate. You don't give yourself credit for any of that, Aang, and you need to. Because that's what makes you the Avatar, not running away or letting the world down. You're doing everything you can, and all you can do now is let fate decide the rest."

"I never thought of it that way. I guess I have been making it up."

"That's the spirit, Aang. Just know that as bad as the world looks right now, it's still better than before you got here. Look at it that way. We've already forgiven you, Aang, and not for nothing."

"Thank you, Katara. I'm so relieved you feel that way." She smiled, clasped his shoulders in her calming embrace for a few fleeting moments, then walked back towards the stream.

And the boulder that had crushed the young air bender's lungs had been healed away like the rounded pebbles in the riverbed.

It was gone,

smoothed away by the soft current of water.


End file.
